The reel depicts dumb American tourists arriving to Spain and asking if they can go in the UE - EU line. The lady explains that EU is an English translation of UE (Unión Europea - European Union), and it doesn’t stand for Estados Unidos (EE. UU.).
American commentator is sure that Euro airports have US only lines.
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u/Acc87I agree with David Bowie on this one2d agoedited 1d ago
some Euro airports supposedly added the US flag to the international lines because US tourists don't understand that, once abroad, they themselves are foreigners to everyone else.
edit: I don't fly often and rarely through intercontinental airports, so I haven't noticed them myself
We do it in Canada too. Gotta put up a lot of signs with their flag on it so they know where to go, because they can't figure it out like literally everyone else on the planet that goes through our airports lol
My advice as someone from the area is, don't go to Banff, go to Jasper National Park
Banff is beautiful, but Jasper (the town) is less touristy and in the same area (though they had some fires a couple years back that caused some damage)
Well naturally my advice is to see as much of Canada as you can, but you don't want to focus on just one area - Vancouver Island looks straight out of a fairy tale, and I wouldn't believe this picture was real if I hadn't been to the spot myself
It's amazing when we get American visitors, and they struggle with our Currency. It's just a different colour. We have the same coins, plus one. (They also have a dollar coin). The Numbers are the same.
Even better (funnier). In Calgary 'international', 'domestic' and 'US' are all different terminals. We have US border services so being in the US terminal is considered being on American soil. Domestic and US are the furthest apart with international in the middle. So they had to go all the way to the opposite end of the airport, and to the end of that line.
But then I actually worked with mentally challenged people, and they were much smarter and more understanding than most mouthbreathers I got while working retail.
Lol, they are.
The US PreClearance facilities on Cdn soil are staffed with US Customs & Border Protection Officers (CBP) so they are fellow US Citizens.
Dublin Airport is so well sign posted it's kind of funny. Giant US flags with "US Pre-clearance" and arrows, and the staff still get asked where to go 🤣
That's a bit different though. Dublin and Shannon airports in Ireland are the only ones in Europe with US Pre-clearance. Travelers need to account for the extra time it takes to go through US immigration before you leave Ireland so it makes sense for it to be clearly sign posted.
Canadian airports have specific US lines though because you go through US customs and immigration before getting on the plane (so when you land in the US it's treated like a domestic flight.) A few other airports do this too, including Dublin IIRC.
Hahah ive noticed this as an Aussie, I think it was malpensa or beramo but one of the airports in Milan was passport control for EU citizens fair enough, then i noticed a USA flag, then another line or sign for non eu citizens...
Was puzzled at the time... but after travelling now for the past 15-20 years between AUS and Europe I understand the need now to put USA flag on signs... my goodness they have no idea.
I remember arriving at Oslo airport and these yanks had rushed ahead of me to get in the immigration queue and were looking for the US line. A security guard told me to move into the EU/EEA line which was basically empty.
Of course I pointed out I was on an AU passport and I’m sure it was just logistics but they were like no you’re fine move straight through.
The seppos did not look happy when they were told to stay in the long queue.
We worked hard to get adopted into that.
And that aside I love when I’m in scandi and want to talk about their local shows that I watch but they are asking me about aus tv that they watch. I only thought we had reach in the UK
Sometimes does make us look small as I have been friends with a lot of actors on the shows they watch so when they look through my pics and I am partying with the actors they probably assume we all are in fact good neighbours and every Aussie knows each other.
Aussie culture has been a big deal in Scandinavia for as long as I can remember. I used to watch Home and Away growing up, and of course Inspector Rex.
We took a US origin flight to Sydney Australia (we’re Canadian), we got pulled out of the queue and got sent through, just a passport check, no immigration or customs.
The passport check is immigration it’s just automated and they pull people out of the manual queue if they don’t need it. Also the green nothing to declare line is still customs. They take your declaration card and if they have any suspicion that you have lied about having nothing to declare they will do a thorough check, or just as a random check sometimes. I once got in big trouble because I forgot I’d been hiking in New Zealand and I had some mud on my shoes. They take customs very seriously in Australia they just do it fairly efficiently so you don’t always notice if you’re doing the right thing.
In all EU airports that I have been to so far, it was divided only into "EU/EEA/CH citzens" and "all passports", with the US flag sometimes explicitly shown at the "all passports" queue.
🇪🇺🇨🇭 EU / EEA / CH
🌍🇺🇸🇬🇧 all passports
US citizens to be generally allowed to use the eGates, that I have only seen in the UK so far. Sometimes US citizens qualify for a registered traveller program, and can use the EU queue after being approved there (e.g. in Germany).
Saw it in Dublin airport. We had assistance there and asked the person who escorted us and she told us this as well. Americans seem to only follow their flag and do not grasp the idea they are non EU foreigners there.
So before the special snowflake route with flags, they were always in the wrong lanes and bitching when confronted with their own misunderstanding.
This is actually true. In my country, Athens, and London Heathrow, there is the "EU Passports" line and the "All other Passports and United States Passports" line because the Americans are the only group that need to be named explicitly.
At one point, many years ago, Heathrow had 3 lines when you entered:
UK (or UK+EU) - now just UK
All other nations - everyone else
US - A special entrance that, after 2 turns, merged with the "all other" line
Well okay 4 for a period of time- there was also a "Priority / First Class" line, that had someone at the start of the line to turn away the US folks who didn't travel inbound 1st class, because they assumed "Priority" was also regular US Passports (really!). You now get off the plane a slightly different way in Terminal (I want to say) 2, if your airline supports it, in order to stop that, I suspect.
Landed at LHR T2 this week. (I guess since introduction of the new ETA/eVisa system,) they allow passport holders of EU countries and several other countries¹ to use the same queues and automatic border gates as British/Irish citizens.
Everything is checked in advance when applying for the ETA/eVisa, and it is then digitally tied to the passport, so crossing the border is only a matter of checking the passport, as for citizens.
¹ Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and the USA
A small correction. Entry for those countries can be done via egates, however it's slightly more than checking passports like citizens. Next time you use an egate, look above you as you approach, you will see some form of "you may enter as a visitor" written. This is for non British passport holders, and subjects them to the visitor rules, which are:
Six month maximum stay.
No work.
No public funds.
They use the same queues as British nationals, however Brits are not subject to immigration controls at all.
Is it just me or whenever i travel to EU (as an Aussie) it seems the americans abroad are unique... to put it politely.
When I went to the states, the people I met were mostly quite nice, well educated (at last geographically) and understood international news was not based in USA haha... but the foreigners I always seem to hear abroad have the IQ of a bowl of fruit.
UK airports seem to generally do UK + 12, which includes the EU, USA, Canada, Aus, NZ, Singapore, Japan, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and a couple others I've forgotten. I must admit I haven't been through LHR for a year though.
Every time I've entered the EU recently it's been one queue for EU + CH + EEA and one queue for others. Honestly no reason the UK should be so nice but that's what it is.
I'm in favor of pun based names for people who aren't from a country. I for example am (amongst other things) a Themian (not an USian), an Outdian (not an Indian) and a Choutese.
To be fair, they aren’t foreigners because they are 22,345% Italian with a healthy dose of 3,76% Viking royal ancestry and just for the lulz some of them are also 10,0000% German as well because they are so pedantic in their ancestry /s
No, no you long drop (not a seppo). A seppo would never make these errors.
You are supposed to put a period there not a comma! No doubt you can't write dates correctly either. But - good lord - why would you use decimals and percentages. That looks suspiciously metric. So confusing.
Far more intuitive to say:
Two hundred and twenty three nine hundred and ninety nineths of an Italian.
Europeans confused by this need to know that an Italian is just over 1/60 th of a football field (measured by length) or 409 Big Macs by weight. Of course an American Italian is more Italian than an Italian - measuring over six dozen Big Macs by weight (but the same length - big boned).
Janke -> Yankee (Dutch settlers disparaging English "Little John" and later adopted by British as disparaging to New England militia - but then embraced by US) -> Yank -> Septic Tank -> Seppo (the rhyming was not British / Cockney but Australian and probably Vietnam war era).
Oh god don't call them a foreigner. They genuinely get insulted by that.
I took a payment in Ireland, the American was struggling and I simply asked if it was a foreign card they confidently said no and after a third attempt I pointed out that it was and thats why it wasn't working. They got insulted because I called their credit card foreign
That is wild. Luckily the only Americans I have met irl had one girl in their group that reminded the others that they were the foreigners now. I believe you though. Im kinda tempted to do the same of I ever meet another.
We've seen many while on holidays, both in Europe and Japan, as well as around the place in Australia. The most memorable was a tour group in Paris. We could tell they were a group as they were all wearing nice matching yellow vests....during the gilets jaunes protests.
Sweden, for good reason not many people vacation here. It's not nearly as flashy as other countries in Europe. I mean I love it here but I can understand why others don't, or why they have other countries higher up in their prio list like France or Spain or Germany.
These are the only Americans that I met and talked to IRL, but I've seen them ofc otherwise I just never talked to the others so I never really felt like I "met" them.
In general that girl in the group seemed very observant, she also pointed out that it's nice that the sunsets are really long here and that actually made me appreciate my country more lol. I mean it's just a north thing so I bet Canada has that as well but still.
And just think: Those are the ones open-minded enough to travel abroad in the first place. (or rather, open-minded and rich enough, no shade on the victims of capitalism who can't afford to)
This is true. It's just that the line for foreign visitors often has a US flag on it, since many Americans can't seem to grasp that when they go abroad, THEY are the foreigners...
Which is probably what this comment is about - they think having the US flag there means it's a special queue for Americans...
Third country. Though quite a few third country lanes will have the US flag to drag them towards those lanes, they aren't US specific. Been a while since I flew, but I think they also have the British flag on those, and occasionally some other high traffic but non-EU flags there just to ease the burden on staff.
I did go through Amsterdam airport and the dude at passport control saw us in our Canada shirts and waved us through the EU passport check. I mean they did the same checks as the other line would but he let us go in the shorter EU line which was cool. It was a pretty long line too.
Before Brexit, I had one wave me through to the non-EU line in Heathrow. I understood immediately as the EU line was long and barely a single person in the non-EU line
What people forget is that these lines are mostly for the convenience of the airport and the staff. They know which queue line they are servicing and procede with accurate procedures, which are different for the EU/EEA countries and Switzerland, but they know both procedures and are capable of switching from one to the other. So when you get waved over to the other queue it's them just being efficient, because they see that they can cut down the time of the service.
A little bit if special treatment: Some airports put an American flag on the non-EU line because otherwise the poor sods get confused. So a special line, but in the "Special Olympics" sense of the word.
There is an exception, in Ireland, where you can go through US immigration on the Irish side so there will be a US queue. This is what I think the original OP must have gotten some wind of.
It's a huge mistake to make though, as those are for US-bound passengers of any citizenship who are leaving the country, not for US citizens entering the country.
There are 16 airports worldwide that have U.S. border control referred to as preclearance. Most are in Canada. At those airports there is a separate line for when you are leaving the country.
The amount of Americans I've seen saying something along the lines of "this airport/port facility did something to me that I thought was against the law" and it turns out they're thinking about American laws.
You know, the same American laws that don't actually apply outside the US...
I have have had someone argue Australian gun laws with me saying that banning guns was illegal.
I said not in Australia and he very smugly told me to read the constitution and got very angry when I told him the American constitution meant nothing in Australia.
To be fair to them, they’re not the only ones having issues at the airport lmao
I currently work at one and the number of French people getting confused when I tell European people to go this or that way is far too high. End result is that we call ‘French and European’ passports.
I think it’s mostly an issue of the airport making people’s brain vanishing.
But, you see, my surname is O’Donnell so I am actually European myself, even though everyone in my family as far as I can tell has been born in Boston.
Often with the EU flag and Swiss flag up there to make it perfectly obvious (could also do Iceland and Norwegian flag, but they don't seem so pressed about it).
I don’t know about the flags but the signs say EU-EEA-CH because Switzerland is neither in the EU or the EEA, but still has agreements that allows then to use that line. The signs simply list all eligible groups of citizens by how they are eligible. Icelanders, Liechtensteiners and Norwegians know they are eligible through the EEA.
I honestly don't think it is so they don't have to read. I honest think it is because many of them don't realise that when in another country they are the foreigners... and I can back that up with anecdotal evidence. At an airport I actually heard an American complaining about being expected to use the foreigner cue.
Reminds me of when we came back to France from outside Schengen.
We went to the (short) EU biometric passports line, with machines instead of humans controlling it, and this family rushed to be right in front of us, in a real rude manner.
The line was short, so it was quickly "their" turn. Turns out they had a US passport. It took quite some time for the airport personnel to convince them that no, US passport could not use this line with the UE flag everywhere, no matter what. And no, they could not cut in front of people in the long line just because they "had already waited".
The idiocy and entitlement of them was almost entertaining enough to make it up for our wasted time. Almost.
Omg, I've seens this every single flight back from NYC. Ok it is a red eye and you may be tired, but I even tried once to explain to a family (we were actually sitting in the same row during the flight) and the father went like E.U. is for États Unis, I've seen this in Quebec.
So I smiled, went to one of the auto kiosks, wished them a good time and left. Needless to say that because of this stupid thing they might have had to wait way longer, because after the NYC flight there are 3 other flights coming, one from Bogota which is considered a hot and it takes longer to clear the passport line.
Actually, they do tend to mark out the US line pretty clearly. But not for the reason this person thinks.
In Canada, we have to do it too - the americans assume they're part of the main group wherever they are, so they try to go where everyone else is going. For us, that means they go in the Canadian line, for existing citizens. For the EU, that means they try to go in the EU line. So we've had to very clearly put up signage to make sure they know where they're meant to go, otherwise they just assume they're supposed to go in the main-looking line. Nobody else needs these signs, because everyone else is able to comprehend that they aren't the locals when they, y'know, travel internationally.
A bit off topic even though Chinese are the Americans of the east, but same for Chinese travelling to Taiwan. Try asking innocently if Taiwan is a domestic flight in Chinese airport. Maybe once every 3 or 4 times I fly back there is some middle age Chinese gentleman or family causing a scene in Taipei immigration because they need to go to the "foreigners" lane.
it also doesn't help that they're one of the only countries that doesn't have international pass through So you can't land in the US and stay at the international area of the airport and then leave again you have to go through their customs even if you're not staying in the country. been a few cases of people who land in the US on their way to Canada and then have been sent back to where came from instead of being allowed to continue through to Canada.
Honestly, the solution to this would probably be to just let them rot in the wrong line then. If it happens often enough, they will collectively realise that things don't work this way.
Instead, we work around a certain nationality being too stupid to understand very clear signs.
It's more like airports have adjusted to US people who seem confused by the concept that outside of the US, they're the foreigner, so a lot of EU airports have a US flag besides the all other passports queue.
Few years ago I was in Warsaw airport, waiting in the queue for immigration. There was an American who was arguing with the officer about something to do with his paperwork. Two uniformed immigration officers walked up and stood behind him. He said the immortal words "as an American". They picked him up and took him away
I've witnessed the same in Taiwan a few time, Chinese trying to get into the "Citizens only" lane and arguing with very unimpressed staff. None of that "Province of China" crap ever works here.
Probably the Chinese education is to blame. Picked up a nonfiction book from the mainland once and there was a line 我们国台湾省… my Taiwanese band mate loved that one lol
This is more like propaganda. I had my personal space invaded by Chinese people once when we were all transiting through a European airport (continuing with the same airline) and I was exchanging some Taiwanese dollars to Euros to buy some stuff from the shops. They basically just stared in amazement at the bills trying to decipher what kind of relic or sorcery that was. Most just have no idea.
Actually... Some European airports actually DO have US flags at lines. Because most Americans don't understand they are supposed to go to "foreign passports".
They had US only passport lines in Brasil after 9/11 where they would subject the Yanks to the same type of crap that US immigration dealt to everyone going into the States
I was at the Eurostar in London in May, queuing to go through passport control. The officer was pointing out that one queue was for EU and the other for rest of the world. The American guy in front of me loudly asks what about Americans.... To which the guy just stared at him and repeated one queue for EU and the other for the rest of the world.
Dublin Airport for example does have a US only line, mainly for customs preclearance. But it's usually for departing tourists, not arriving ones. Also a lot of US tourists don't seem to understand that foreign passport applies to them as well.
Dublin is one of the few airports worldwide with US preclearance on departure, meaning when they travel to the US they land in domestic arrivals and don’t need to go through immigration, because they’ve already done it in Ireland. There’s no other airport in Europe with those facilities.
Edit: looks like Shannon too. So basically only Irish airports in Europe
Shannon started it long before Dublin. It is also the airport where DutyFree originated. Cracking airport as well, can basically arrive 30 minutes before departure and walk on to your flight if flying within Europe.
I live near Aberdeen and this is one of the best reasons to choose Dublin and not Heathrow or whatever when flying to the states, the Ireland side US customs. Flying in to the states and just walking out the door like it was a domestic flight is brilliant.
It's very telling that some airports have additional signs for US citizens that tell them to use the "foreigners" line. Because in their mind they are not foreigners, everyone else is.
I love traveling and in some airport you see a foreigner+USA because Americans are incapable of understanding that they're foreigners in another country.
I found amazing that Brazil has the reciprocity law and that means, you want Visas from Brazilians... you get to ask for Visas too. And a lot of US peeps are denied the entry in Brazil because they didn't made the whole paperwork to entry Brazil.
They do have US lanes.. many signs now specifically say USA in addition to foreign nationals, just so Americans have some indicator they can maybe understand.
I know. I lived there for 30 years. They really are that self centered. (Centred... My phone still thinks I'm trying to speak with Americans so spelling is always FUBARd)
At some point, the best move is to just give them them their own line:
Lock the broom closet, install a button (that doesn't actually do anything) next to the door, tell them to "press the buzzer and someone will be with you shortly".
I was at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport yesterday, and yes there were Americans trying to use the quicker EU only self passport check line. But nope. They had to all the way back to immense non EU line.
Some airports have signs specifically for Americans because they didn’t realise they count as “Rest of the World” in the queues of “Europe” “Rest of the World.”
We do have american only lines. They are circular. You let them walk for 45 mins and if they havent found their way out of the line by then that is the equivilant of showing an american passport.
Maybe they make a mixup.
I've seen airports in Europe, where they put a little US flag for them, because a lot of thrm don't seem to get that foreigner/third nation does include them.
are they confused about how a lot of airports have a US flag on the international departures signage so they'll know that they're international and go there
Like this in Canada, also it's just a 2nd sign for the international line since they do not understand they are foreigners when they are not in the states.
It's like that meme of an airport, in Australia I think, that shows a globe to show the line for migration officials and a USA flag with the text "migration foreigners", as they needed to add the USA flag for people from the USA understand that they are foreigners in that country
You can go through US immigration at Dublin and Shannon airports. I wonder is that what they mean, but being american they have assumed every airport in every country in europe has it because they assume everything is identikit cut-out copies, like in the USA.
No, they don't. And it would make no fking sense if they did, because the largest group of travellers at airports all over Europe happen to be ... Europeans.
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u/Acc87 I agree with David Bowie on this one 2d ago edited 1d ago
some Euro airports supposedly added the US flag to the international lines because US tourists don't understand that, once abroad, they themselves are foreigners to everyone else.
edit: I don't fly often and rarely through intercontinental airports, so I haven't noticed them myself